Pearl Jam began its last encore of a two-concert weekend at Alpine Valley Music Theatre by whipping up a little funnel cloud of a song called “Do the Evolution.”
The song begins with Stone Gossard hacking furiously at his guitar, a grinding riff straight out of the Stooges’ 1969 debut album, and Eddie Vedder howls like a beast straining at his leash. The song is a bitter blast of self-loathing, a mockery of self-congratulatory human “progress.” In other words, a song that typifies the Pearl Jam stereotype: full of blood, bile and torment.
But at its midpoint, the lyric broke into a tongue-in-cheek “hallelujah” chorus. As the house lights went up, Vedder raised his arms and turned more than 30,000 concertgoers into a church choir under his direction. Then the singer flashed some hip-shaking dance moves worthy of Pee Wee Herman in “Tequila” mode. “That’s evolution, baby!” Vedder wailed as the band stormed into the final verse.
The effect was liberating. Suddenly the song shifted from a self-flagellating rant into a celebration, a dance amid the ruins. Hey kids, just because the world’s going down the drain doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!
For years that had been the missing ingredient in Pearl Jam, a band with its heart in the right place, but so tightly wound it almost hurt to watch them sometimes. Last time through the Midwest, in 1995, the Seattle quintet–which will play the United Center on Monday–was wearing its troubles like a hair shirt. Stooped at the shoulders, Vedder stood rock-still at the microphone and howled, the band huddled around him like a human shield. The us-against-them battle against Ticketmaster was going badly, and what was then one of the world’s biggest bands seemed on the verge of disappearing into the big black hole of dashed expectations.
Remarkably, the band most likely to be crushed by the mirror ball of fame is still in the game. Vedder looked shaggy and spry, almost mischievous as he joked with the crowd about the uses of a plastic-foam cheese (as opposed to, say, the meaning of nothingness). But when it counted, his intensity was, as ever, engrossing–here’s a singer who crawls back inside his songs, and the turbulent emotions they hold, each time he performs them. And he’s got a voice that is worth the attention it receives, an instrument that conveys sullen sensuality, blood-curdling torment and, most crucially, an aching tenderness in the space of a verse.
Gossard was a bespectacled force on rhythm guitar, his choppy syncopations the foundation of tracks ranging from the blast-furnace “Corduroy” to the off-kilter “Tremor Christ.” His approach freed bassist Jeff Ament to bob and weave through the arrangements almost like an extra lead guitar player, especially as he wielded a 12-string on “Jeremy.” Former Soundgarden member Matt Cameron–the band’s fourth drummer in eight years–was a good fit not so much for his muscularity but for his unexpectedly light touch on the ballads.
Guitarist Mike McCready was a fashion train wreck: bleached blond buzz cut, Pink Floyd T-shirt. But in a sense, that contradiction is what Pearl Jam’s music is all about: a mix of the grandeur of early ’70s dinosaur rock and blood-in-the-eye ’80s postpunk. It was McCready who recast a Led Zeppelin riff as the recent Pearl Jam single “Given to Fly.” And it was McCready who played solos behind his neck, or leaned back and closed his eyes in midsolo, as aware of the spotlight as a veteran stadium rocker. But next to Vedder, he was the livest wire on the stage, attacking the strings and then smashing his guitar as though his circuits were overloading on “Brain of J,” and later lifting “Go” into overdrive with a fire-alarm rampage.
Although early songs such as “Alive” and “Even Flow” were clearly the crowd favorites, with their slow-build dynamics and surging choruses, the band’s more recent material was what impressed. Although the quintet’s reputation was once built on rafter-climbing stunts by the young and restless Vedder, now he can stand on a darkened stage with just a guitar and hold the night with songs that measure up to those of heroes such as Pete Townshend and Neil Young.
Though there’s a tendency among the band’s detractors to portray Vedder and Pearl Jam as angst-ridden whiners, the reality of the songs is something else. There is a compassion in the band’s best work that is universal, that portrays common people who live in the world yet cannot ever be fully a part of it. There was the abused wife in “Better Man,” her anxiety mirrored by music that began with murmured contemplation, then shifted into rage and then a kind of exaltation, as though honoring her dignity in the midst of an impossible situation. There was “Wish List,” a plea for strength and betterment that has all the simplicity and power of a prayer. And there was “Off He Goes,” a portrait of a friendship lived out in snapshots and fragments on the road, like a memo from Jack Kerouac to Neal Cassady.
These were fragile songs, and Vedder’s husky baritone suited their moody, mahogany tones. It was a voice of reassurance and comfort, as though the singer were putting an arm around the little army of his misfits in his songs and, by extension, the young tribe who came to hear him and his band in the Wisconsin night.
